Complexity Digest 2007.38

5-Oct-2007

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Content

  1. Google Testing "My World" For Launch Later This Year, ars technica
    1. Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped, Foreign Policy
    2. Fire And Flood Management Of Coastal Swamp Enabled First Rice Paddy Cultivation In East China, Nature
  2. Storytelling, Time, and Evolution: The Role of Strategic Leadership in Complex Adaptive Systems, The Leadership Quarterly
    1. Human Cooperation In Social Dilemmas: Comparing The Snowdrift Game With The Prisoner's Dilemma, Proc. Biol. Sc.
    2. The Social Network Of Contemporary Popular Musicians, Int. J. Bifur. & Chaos
    3. Using Graph Concepts To Understand The Organization Of Complex Systems, Int. J. Bifur. & Chaos
  3. Cockroaches Are Morons In The Morning, Geniuses In The Evening, ScienceDaily
  4. Genomics: Deep Questions In The Tree Of Life, Science
  5. Late Archean Biospheric Oxygenation and Atmospheric Evolution, Science
    1. A Whiff of Oxygen Before the Great Oxidation Event?, Science
  6. From Bit to It: How a Complex Metabolic Network Transforms Information into Living Matter, SFI Working Papers
  7. Non-linear Dynamics and Leadership Emergence, The Leadership Quarterly
  8. Correlated Evolution and Dietary Change in Fossil Stickleback, Science
  9. Clever Plants 'Chat' Over Their Own Network, ScienceDaily
    1. Bacteria May Be Wiring Up The Soil, Nature
  10. Neuroscience: Uncovering The Magic In Magnetic Brain Stimulation, Science
    1. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Elicits Coupled Neural and Hemodynamic Consequences, Science
    2. The Fractionation Of Spoken Language Understanding By Measuring Electrical And Magnetic Brain Signals, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc.
  11. Immunology: Changed Destiny, Nature
    1. Taking Dendritic Cells Into Medicine, Nature
  12. Ocean Pipes Could Help The Earth To Cure Itself, Nature
  13. Electron Superhighway - Can Graphene Overtake Silicon As The Essential Ingredient Of Computer Chips?, Science
  14. Fluid Theory Confirmed By Foton, ESA
  15. Physicists Tackle Knotty Puzzle, PhysOrg.com
  16. Quantum Physics: Qubits Ride The Photon Bus, Nature
    1. Physics: Quantum Weirdness in the Lab, Science
    2. Probing Quantum Commutation Rules by Addition and Subtraction of Single Photons to/from a Light Field, Science
    3. Physics: Does Our Universe Allow for Robust Quantum Computation?, Science
  17. Cosmology: A Singular Conundrum: How Odd Is Our Universe?, Science
  18. Symmetrized Characterization of Noisy Quantum Processes, Science
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Staged Cyber Attack Reveals Vulnerability In Power Grid, CNN
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Google Testing "My World" For Launch Later This Year, ars technica Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Google Earth CTO Michael Jones insisted (first comment after the post) in January that Google Earth would always remain true to the real world and not dive into the type of fantasy world that Second Life has become. Therefore, Google's implementation would be more like "First Life," but in virtual form. If "My World" turns out to be a virtual representation of real life, however, it seems natural to question the purpose of launching such a service. We could, after all, just step outside and see these things from the vantage point of a real human, not a virtual one.

    1. Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped, Foreign Policy Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/Getty Images Plan B: Saving the world's most fragile places may require a new approach.
      Developed countries, which have produced most of the human-origin carbon dioxide in the air, will be in the best position to cope with climate change and developing countries will want them to bear a disproportionate financial burden for its consequences.

      Still, we do have some of the tools we will need already. International lenders like the World Bank have only begun to invest in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; they need to give greater emphasis to projects that limit developing countries' vulnerabilities to climate change.

    2. Fire And Flood Management Of Coastal Swamp Enabled First Rice Paddy Cultivation In East China, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The adoption of cereal cultivation was one of the most important cultural processes in history, marking the transition from hunting and gathering by Mesolithic foragers to the food-producing economy of Neolithic farmers. In the Lower Yangtze region of China, a centre of rice domestication, the timing and system of initial rice cultivation remain unclear. Here we report detailed evidence from Kuahuqiao that reveals the precise cultural and environmental context of rice cultivation at this earliest known Neolithic site in eastern China, 7,700 calibrated years before present (cal. yr bp).

  2. Storytelling, Time, and Evolution: The Role of Strategic Leadership in Complex Adaptive Systems, The Leadership Quarterly Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Organizations are increasingly being described as complex adaptive systems (CAS). In this view, the behavior and structure of an organization emerges out of the interaction of a collection of organizational agents. Seemingly, there is no role for strategic leadership because the system self-organizes. We argue that strategic leaders play a crucial role in moving organizations to the "edge of chaos" and aid in organizational learning and adaptation by influencing the tags that produce the structure of interactions among organizational agents. Through dialogue and storytelling, strategic leaders shape the evolution of agent interactions and construct the shared meanings that provide the rationale by which the past, the present, and the future of the organization coalesce.

    1. Human Cooperation In Social Dilemmas: Comparing The Snowdrift Game With The Prisoner's Dilemma, Proc. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Explaining the evolution of cooperation among non-relatives is one of the major challenges for evolutionary biology. In this study, we experimentally examined human cooperation in the iterated Snowdrift game (ISD), which has received little attention so far, and compared it with human cooperation in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD), which has become the paradigm for the evolution of cooperation. We show that iteration in the ISD leads to consistently higher levels of cooperation than in the IPD. (...) Altogether, our study shows that the ISD can potentially explain high levels of cooperation among non-relatives in humans. (...)

    2. The Social Network Of Contemporary Popular Musicians, Int. J. Bifur. & Chaos Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: In this paper, we analyze two social network datasets of contemporary musicians constructed from allmusic.com (AMG), a music and artists' information database: one is the collaboration network in which two musicians are connected if they have performed or produced an album together, and the other is the similarity network in which they are connected if they were musically similar according to the music experts. We find that, while both networks exhibit typical features of social networks such as high transitivity (clustering), we find that they differ significantly in some key network features such as the degree and the betweenness distributions. (...)

    3. Using Graph Concepts To Understand The Organization Of Complex Systems, Int. J. Bifur. & Chaos Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Complex networks are universal, arising in fields as disparate as sociology, physics and biology. In the past decade, extensive research into the properties and behaviors of complex systems has uncovered surprising commonalities among the topologies of different systems. Attempts to explain these similarities have led to the ongoing development and refinement of network models and graph-theoretical analysis techniques with which to characterize and understand complexity. In this tutorial, we demonstrate through illustrative examples, how network measures and models have contributed to the elucidation of the organization of complex systems.

  3. Cockroaches Are Morons In The Morning, Geniuses In The Evening, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: In its ability to learn, the cockroach is a moron in the morning and a genius in the evening. "This is the first example of an insect whose ability to learn is controlled by its biological clock," says (...). The few studies that have been done with mammals suggest their ability to learn also varies with the time of day. For example, a recent experiment with humans found that people's ability to acquire new information is reduced when their biological clocks are disrupted, particularly at certain times of day. (...) have found that these processes are modulated by their circadian clocks. (...)

  4. Genomics: Deep Questions In The Tree Of Life, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A genome sequence might provide answers to major questions about the biology and evolutionary history of an organism. Alternatively, it might reveal more problems than solutions, and its true value then lies in identifying what questions to ask. Perhaps the most interesting genomes do both: They are a panacea and a Pandora's box. On page 1921in this issue, Morrison et al. (1) describe such a genome from the diplomonad protist Giardia lamblia, a human intestinal parasite.

  5. Late Archean Biospheric Oxygenation and Atmospheric Evolution, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: High-resolution geochemical analyses of organic-rich shale and carbonate through the 2500 million-year-old Mount McRae Shale in the Hamersley Basin of northwestern Australia record changes in both the oxidation state of the surface ocean and the atmospheric composition. The Mount McRae record of sulfur isotopes captures the widespread and possibly permanent activation of the oxidative sulfur cycle for perhaps the first time in Earth's history. The correlation of the time-series sulfur isotope signals in northwestern Australia with equivalent strata from South Africa suggests that changes in the exogenic sulfur cycle recorded in marine sediments were global in scope and were linked to atmospheric evolution.
    • Source: Late Archean Biospheric Oxygenation and Atmospheric Evolution, Alan J. Kaufman, David T. Johnston, James Farquhar, Andrew L. Masterson, Timothy W. Lyons, Steve Bates, Ariel D. Anbar, Gail L. Arnold, Jessica Garvin, Roger Buick, DOI: 10.1126/science.1138700, Science : Vol. 317. no. 5846, pp. 1900 - 1903, 07/09/28

    1. A Whiff of Oxygen Before the Great Oxidation Event?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: High-resolution chemostratigraphy reveals an episode of enrichment of the redox-sensitive transition metals molybdenum and rhenium in the late Archean Mount McRae Shale in Western Australia. Correlations with organic carbon indicate that these metals were derived from contemporaneous seawater. Rhenium/osmium geochronology demonstrates that the enrichment is a primary sedimentary feature dating to 2501 +- 8 million years ago (Ma). Molybdenum and rhenium were probably supplied to Archean oceans by oxidative weathering of crustal sulfide minerals.
      • Source: A Whiff of Oxygen Before the Great Oxidation Event?, Ariel D. Anbar, Yun Duan, Timothy W. Lyons, Gail L. Arnold, Brian Kendall, Robert A. Creaser, Alan J. Kaufman, Gwyneth W. Gordon, Clinton Scott, Jessica Garvin, Roger Buick, DOI: 10.1126/science.1140325, Science : Vol. 317. no. 5846, pp. 1903 - 1906, 07/09/28

  6. From Bit to It: How a Complex Metabolic Network Transforms Information into Living Matter, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Organisms live and die by the amount of information they acquire about their environment. The systems analysis of complex metabolic networks allows us to ask how such information translates into fitness. A metabolic network transforms nutrients into biomass. The better it uses information on available nutrient availability, the faster it will allow a cell to divide.(...) The analysis of metabolic networks opens a door to understanding cellular biology from a quantitative, informationtheoretic perspective.

  7. Non-linear Dynamics and Leadership Emergence, The Leadership Quarterly Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The process by which leaders emerge from leaderless groups is well-documented, but not nearly as well understood. This article describes how non-linear dynamical systems concepts of attractors, bifurcations, and self-organization culminate in a swallowtail catastrophe model for the leadership emergence process, and presents the experimental results that the model has produced thus far for creative problem solving, production, and coordination-intensive groups. Several control variables have been identified that vary in their function depending on what type of group is involved, e.g. creative problem solving, production, and coordination-intensive groups. The exposition includes the relevant statistical strategies that are based on non-linear regression along with some directions for new research questions that can be explored through this non-linear model.

  8. Correlated Evolution and Dietary Change in Fossil Stickleback, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The importance of trophic ecology in adaptation and evolution is well known, yet direct evidence that feeding controls microevolution over extended evolutionary time scales, available only from the fossil record, is conspicuously lacking. Through quantitative analysis of tooth microwear, we show that rapid evolutionary change in Miocene stickleback was associated with shifts in feeding, providing direct evidence from the fossil record for changes in trophic niche and resource exploitation driving directional, microevolutionary change over thousands of years.

  9. Clever Plants 'Chat' Over Their Own Network, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Recent research (...) reveals that plants have their own chat systems that they can use to warn each other. (...) Therefore plants cannot be considered boring and passive organisms that just stand there waiting to be cut off or eaten up. Many plants form internal communications networks and are able to exchange information efficiently. Chat network: Many herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form networks. Individual plants remain connected with each other for a certain period of time by means of runners. These connections enable the plants to share information with each other via internal channels. (...)

    1. Bacteria May Be Wiring Up The Soil, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Bacteria can sprout webs of electrical wiring that transform the soil into a geological battery, a team of researchers claims. Some soil bacteria form networks of tiny wires linking individual bacterial cells into a web-like electrical circuit, they report (D. Ntarlagiannis et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L17305; 2007). The wires allow the bacteria to get rid of electrons generated during metabolism, transporting them to distant 'electron dumps'.

  10. Neuroscience: Uncovering The Magic In Magnetic Brain Stimulation, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: For depression therapy, for example, "we may need people to become sad in the chair while stimulating [them]," George says. "Alternatively, we might have them engage in formal cognitive therapy, thinking positive thoughts." Such considerations are important, he adds, as the Food and Drug Administration is considering approval for daily TMS of the prefrontal cortex to treat depression.

    The new findings also suggest why the effects of TMS often vary, (...).

    1. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Elicits Coupled Neural and Hemodynamic Consequences, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an increasingly common technique used to selectively modify neural processing. However, application of TMS is limited by uncertainty concerning its physiological effects. We applied TMS to the cat visual cortex and evaluated the neural and hemodynamic consequences. Short TMS pulse trains elicited initial activation (1 minute) and prolonged suppression (5 to 10 minutes) of neural responses. Furthermore, TMS disrupted the temporal structure of activity by altering phase relationships between neural signals.

    2. The Fractionation Of Spoken Language Understanding By Measuring Electrical And Magnetic Brain Signals, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: This paper focuses on what electrical and magnetic recordings of human brain activity reveal about spoken language understanding. Based on the high temporal resolution of these recordings, a fine-grained temporal profile of different aspects of spoken language comprehension can be obtained. Crucial aspects of speech comprehension are lexical access, selection and semantic integration. Results show that for words spoken in context, there is no 'magic moment' when lexical selection ends and semantic integration begins. Irrespective of whether words have early or late recognition points, semantic integration processing is initiated before words can be identified on the basis of the acoustic information alone. (...)

  11. Immunology: Changed Destiny, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: For practical and ethical reasons, researchers are on the lookout for ways to reprogramme one mature cell type into another. In one case, this might be as easy as switching off a single gene.

    1. Taking Dendritic Cells Into Medicine, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Dendritic cells (DCs) orchestrate a repertoire of immune responses that bring about resistance to infection and silencing or tolerance to self. In the settings of infection and cancer, microbes and tumours can exploit DCs to evade immunity, but DCs also can generate resistance, a capacity that is readily enhanced with DC-targeted vaccines. During allergy, autoimmunity and transplant rejection, DCs instigate unwanted responses that cause disease, but, again, DCs can be harnessed to silence these conditions with novel therapies. Here we present some medical implications of DC biology that account for illness and provide opportunities for prevention and therapy.

  12. Ocean Pipes Could Help The Earth To Cure Itself, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: We propose a way to stimulate the Earth's capacity to cure itself, as an emergency treatment for the pathology of global warming. (...) One approach would be to use free-floating or tethered vertical pipes to increase the mixing of nutrient-rich waters below the thermocline with the relatively barren waters at the ocean surface. (...) Water pumped up pipes - say, 100 to 200 metres long, 10 metres in diameter and with a one-way flap valve at the lower end for pumping by wave movement - would fertilize algae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom.

  13. Electron Superhighway - Can Graphene Overtake Silicon As The Essential Ingredient Of Computer Chips?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    GATEKEEPER. Engineers may one day be able to carve devices such as this transistor out of a single layer of carbon atoms. The voltage at an electrode (red) controls whether or not the link connecting two other electrodes (blue) conducts electricity, switching the transistor on or off. E. Plotkin/Physics Today
    Because electrons in graphene move at high speeds, graphene-based transistors could in principle switch currents on and off faster than semiconductor-based transistors do. Like carbon nanotubes, graphene is an excellent conductor of heat, so graphene chips could stay cooler than silicon chips. But the feature that makes graphene most appealing to scientists is its toughness.

    "The graphitic bond - the carbon-to-carbon bond - is the strongest in nature," even stronger than the bonds between carbon atoms in diamond, says de Heer.

  14. Fluid Theory Confirmed By Foton, ESA Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    False colour images showing concentration fluctuations for the Mixture fluid sample on Earth (left) and aboard Foton-M3 (right). Credits: ESA
    All liquids experience minute fluctuations in temperature or concentration as a result of the different velocities of individual molecules. These fluctuations are usually so small that they are extremely difficult to observe.

    In the 1990s, scientists discovered that these tiny fluctuations in fluids and gases can increase in size, and even be made visible to the naked eye, if a strong gradient is introduced. One way to achieve this is to increase the temperature at the bottom of a thin liquid layer, though not quite enough to cause convection. (...)


  15. Physicists Tackle Knotty Puzzle, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Digital photos of knots with computer-generated drawings based on mathematical calculations. Image credit: Dorian Raymer, UCSD
    The study, (...), investigated the likelihood of knot formation and the types of knots formed in a tumbled string. The researchers say they were interested in the problem because it has many applications, including to the biophysics research questions their group usually studies.

    "Knot formation is important in many fields" said Douglas Smith, an assistant professor of physics who was the senior author on the paper. "For example, knots often form in DNA, which is a long string-like molecule."

  16. Quantum Physics: Qubits Ride The Photon Bus, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Quantum mechanics using whole electrical circuits might seem a far-fetched idea. But make the circuits superconducting, and they can be used to send and collect single photons, rather like atoms do - only better.

    1. Physics: Quantum Weirdness in the Lab, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Parigi et al. measure the quantum mechanical state of a thermal light field after performing these two operations on it, and they show that the final state depends on the order in which the operations are performed. This result is a striking confirmation of the lack of commutativity of quantum mechanical operators. Moreover, the authors present the strongly counterintuitive result that, under certain conditions, the removal of a photon from a light field can lead to an increase in the mean number of photons in that light field, as predicted earlier.

    2. Probing Quantum Commutation Rules by Addition and Subtraction of Single Photons to/from a Light Field, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The possibility of arbitrarily "adding" and "subtracting" single photons to and from a light field may give access to a complete engineering of quantum states and to fundamental quantum phenomena. We experimentally implemented simple alternated sequences of photon creation and annihilation on a thermal field and used quantum tomography to verify the peculiar character of the resulting light states. In particular, as the final states depend on the order in which the two actions are performed, we directly observed the noncommutativity of the creation and annihilation operators,(...)

    3. Physics: Does Our Universe Allow for Robust Quantum Computation?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Computers operating purely according to the laws of quantum theory might break modern cryptographic codes (1), revolutionize quantum chemical calculations (2), and overturn the most basic limits to computing (3). Standing in the way of creating these dream machines is the fact that quantum computers do not like to maintain their quantum nature, but instead have a propensity to decay into machines obeying the classical laws of physics.

  17. Cosmology: A Singular Conundrum: How Odd Is Our Universe?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Subtleties in the big bang afterglow could hint that the universe is arranged around an "axis of evil." Or they may be the products of random chance. With only one universe to study researchers may be hard pressed to say one way or the other.

    Researchers charted the slight variations in the temperature of the radiation, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), to produce a sky map resembling a dimply lime.

  18. Symmetrized Characterization of Noisy Quantum Processes, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A major goal of developing high-precision control of many-body quantum systems is to realize their potential as quantum computers. A substantial obstacle to this is the extreme fragility of quantum systems to "decoherence" from environmental noise and other control limitations. Although quantum computation is possible if the noise affecting the quantum system satisfies certain conditions, existing methods for noise characterization are intractable for present multibody systems. We introduce a technique based on symmetrization that enables direct experimental measurement of some key properties of the decoherence affecting a quantum system.

  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Staged Cyber Attack Reveals Vulnerability In Power Grid, CNN Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Researchers who launched an experimental cyber attack caused a generator to self-destruct, alarming the federal government and electrical industry about what might happen if such an attack were carried out on a larger scale, CNN has learned.

      Sources familiar with the experiment said the same attack scenario could be used against huge generators that produce the country's electric power.

      Some experts fear bigger, coordinated attacks could cause widespread damage to electric infrastructure that could take months to fix.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Innovation Diffusion in Heterogeneous Populations: Contagion, Social Influence, and Social Learning, H. Peyton Young, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 07-09-038
      2. Synchrony Dynamics During Initiation, Failure, and Rescue of the Segmentation Clock, Ingmar H. Riedel-Kruse, Claudia M?ller, Andrew C. Oates, 07/09/28, Science Vol. 317. no. 5846, pp. 1911 - 1915. A model of the segmentation clock, coupled genetic oscillators that sequentially generate the body segments of animals, successfully predicts the results of system perturbations., DOI: 10.1126/science.1142538
      3. Double Trouble: Tumors Have Two-Pronged Defense, 07/09/29, ScienceNews, By depleting an essential amino acid and releasing a toxin, cancer cells can ward off attack by the immune system.
      4. Honeybee Mobs Smother Big Hornets, 07/09/29, ScienceNews, Honeybees gang up on an attacking hornet, killing it by blocking its breathing.
      5. Tea Compound Aids Dying Brain Cells, 07/09/29, ScienceNews, A constituent of green tea rescues brain cells damaged in a way that mimics the effect of Parkinson's disease.
      6. Distracted? Tea Might Help Your Focus, 07/09/29, ScienceNews, An amino acid in tea combines with the brew's caffeine to enliven brain cells that aid concentration.
      7. Brain Drain In Developing Countries, F. Docquier - docquieraires.ucl.ac.be, O. Lohest - olohestahotmail.com, A. Marfouk - marfoukaskynet.be, 2007, 21:2, online 2007/06/13, The World Bank Economic Review, DOI: 10.1093/wber/lhm008
      8. Transition from Small to Large World in Growing Networks, S. N. Dorogovtsev, P. L. Krapivsky, J. F. F. Mendes, 2007/09/19, arXiv, DOI: 0709.3094
      9. Language Processing In The Natural World, M. K. Tanenhaus, S. B.-Schmidt, 2007/09/25, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2007.2162
      10. Digital Cable Goes Quantum, 2007/09/27, Innovations-report
      11. Music Training Linked To Enhanced Verbal Skills, 2007/09/27, ScienceDaily & Northwestern University
      12. Burma Cuts Internet Access: Junta Tries Desperately To Block Footage Of Crackdown, I. Thomson, 2007/09/28, vnunet.com
      13. 'Hot' Ice Could Lead To Medical Device, 2007/09/28, ScienceDaily & Harvard University
      14. 'Dead Time' Limits Quantum Cryptography Speeds, 2007/10/01, Innovations-report
      15. High School Footballers Wearing Special Helmets To Monitor Brain Injuries, 2007/10/01, Innovations-report
      16. Do Migratory Birds 'See' The Magnetic Field?, 2007/10/01, ScienceDaily & Public Library Of Science
      17. The Motor System Shows Adaptive Changes In Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, C. Maihöfner - christian.maihoefnerauk-erlangen.de, R. Baron, R. DeCo, A. Binder, F. Birklein, G. Deuschl, H. O. Handwerker, J. Schattschneider, Oct. 2007, online 2007/06/15., Brain, DOI: 10.1093/brain/awm131

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Reseau Nationale des Systemes Complexes , (in French), 2007
      2. World Economic Forum , Davos, Switzerland, 07/01/24-28
      3. TED Talks, TED Conferences LLC , since 2006
      4. Talking Robots: The PodCast on Robotics and AI, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 06/11/03
      5. Potentials of Complexity Science for Business, Governments, and the Media 2006, Budapest, Hungary, 06/08/03-05
      6. 6th Intl Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS), Boston, MA, 06/06/25-30
      7. Artificial Life X, 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Bloomington, IN, USA. 2006/06/03-07
      8. 6th Understanding Complex Systems Symposium, Urbana-Champaign, Il, 06/05/15-18
      9. Ralph Abraham on Complexity Digest, , Calcutta, India, 05/12/27
      10. An Afternoon with Michael Crichton, Washington, 05/11/06
      11. Illuminating the Shadow of the Future, Ann Arbor, Mi 05/09/23-25
      12. Open Network of Centres of Excellence in Complex Systems - Brainstorming Meeting, Paris, France 05/09/19-23
      13. Complexity, Science & Society Conference 2005, U. Liverpool, UK 2005/09/11-14
      14. ECAL 2005 - VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life, Canterbury, Kent, UK 2005/09/5-9
      15. T. Irene Sanders, Executive Director and Founder, The Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy, 05/08/27, QuickTime video (10:38 min), Podcast
      16. North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity 2005 Conference, Virtual Conference Network, St. Pete's Beach, Florida, 05/06/09-11
      17. Understanding Complex Systems - Computational Complexity and Bioinformatics, Virtual Conference Network, Urbana-Champaign, Il, UIUC, 05/05/16-19
      18. Nonlinearity, Fluctuations, and Complexity, with a celebration of the 65th birthday of Gregoire Nicolis. , Complexity Session, Universite' Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 05/03/16
      19. 1st European Conference on Complex Systems, Torino, Italy, 04/12/5-7
      20. From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela (1946-2001), Paris, France, 2004/06/18-20
      21. Evolutionary Epistemology, Language, and Culture, Brussels, Belgium, 04/05/26-28
      22. International Conference on Complex Systems 2004, Boston, 04/05/16-21
      23. Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: Lab Demonstrations, Strogatz, Steven H., Internet-First University Press, 1994
      24. CERN Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and Live Events
      25. Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since February 1998
      26. Edge Videos

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. European Conference on Complex Systems 2007 (ECCS'07), Dresden, Germany, 07/10/01-05
      2. Processes Of Emergence Of Systems And Systemic Properties. Towards A General Theory Of Emergence. , Castel Ivano (Trento), 07/10/18-20
      3. 2nd Annual Conf on The Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water, West Dover, Vermont. 07/10/18-21
      4. Smithsonian conference, Creating a Sustainable Future in a Complex World, Washington, DC, 07/10/27
      5. Intl Conf on Complex Systems 2007, Boston, MA, USA, 07/10/28-11/02
      6. The Huntsville Simulation Conference 2007, Huntsville, Alabama, 07/10/30-11/01
      7. 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM Intl Joint Conf on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT'07), Silicon Valley, USA, 07/11/02-05
      8. Theory In Cognitive Neuroscience, Wildbad Kreuth (Bavaria), Germany, 07/11/04-07
      9. 7th Intl Conf on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems , Piscataway, NJ, 07/11/05-07
      10. KSS 2007 - 8th Intl Symposium on Knowledge and Systems Sciences, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan, 07/11/05-07
      11. NetLogo Workshop at Agent 2007 Conference, Evanston, IL, USA, 07/11/12-14
      12. Australia New Zealand Systems Conference 2007 "Systemic development: Local solutions in a global environment", Auckland, New Zealand, 07/12/02-05
      13. The 3rd Indian Intl Conf on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI-07), Pune, INDIA, 07/12/17-19
      14. The 1st Conf on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-08), Memphis, Tennessee, USA, 08/03/01-03
      15. The 3rd International Nonlinear Sciences Conference (INSC), Tokyo, Japan, 08/03/13-15
      16. 19th European Meeting On Cybernetics And Systems Research, (EMCSR 2008), Vienna, Austria, 08/03/25-28
      17. 1st Intl Conf on Social Entrepreneurship & Complexity, Garden City, NY, USA, 08/04/10-12
      18. The 12th World Multi-Conf on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2008, Orlando, Florida, USA, 08/06/29-07/02
      19. From Animals To Animats 10 - The 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation Of Adaptive Behavior (SAB'08), Osaka, Japan, 08/07/07-12
      20. Stochastic Resonance 2008, Perugia, Italy, 08/08/17-21

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share

      1. " Wolfram Research is Now the Official Math Brain Trust for the Hit CBS Series NUMB3RS. 07/10/05
      2. A short notice from Dean LeBaron

        Dear ComDig Readers,

        Our editor, Dr. Gottfried Mayer, is affectionately esteemed by many of you -- as readers, you know he devotes himself unselfishly to widening our knowledge of complexity science. He was recently diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and given a timetable of a very few years. Knowing Gottfried, you can imagine that, in addition to the customary processes of chemotherapy, he would explore other frontier therapies, especially those arising out of interdisciplinary applications of complexity. These are expensive ... if he can find them.

        Many of you have sent your good wishes and indicated your desire to assist. With Gottfried's permission, I am posting this note with information, below, about how to send contributions to him. Please indicate the source since Gottfried will want to express his warm gratitude.

        I know that Gottfried, the good scientist that he is, will explain from time to time what he is doing and what the results are ... and we will follow his progress with great interest and hope.

        Dean LeBaron
        Publisher, Complexity Digest

        Bank Information:

        If your contribution is made by check:
        Please mail the check, payable to "Gottfried Mayer", to:
        Manufacturers & Traders Trust
        2080 Western Avenue
        20 Mall
        Guilderland, NY 12084 USA
        (on the back of the check, please write: "For Deposit Only: Account # 983 338 3814")

        If your contribution is made by wire:
        Manufacturers & Traders Trust
        2080 Western Avenue
        20 Mall

        Guilderland, NY 12084 USA
        SWIFT Code# MANTUS33
        UID: 209 791
        ABA routing # 022 00 00 46 [for US wire transfers]
        Account # 983 338 3814
        Ref. Gottfried Mayer

      3. Intl Master of Science in Methods For Management Of Complex Systems - Academic Year 2007-2008, Institute for Advanced Study, Pavia, Italy, 08/01/01
      4. News notes on Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE) for July 2007 are now available on-line, 07/08/04
      5. National Humanities Center Launches Humanities/Sciences Website, 07/04, As part of its ongoing "Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human & The Humanities" project (ASC), the National Humanities Center makes public a new website for the initiative which significantly expands the potential pool of humanists and scientists engaged in the exploration and examination of topics surrounding the question of human being.

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